The Biography of Oral Bliss

The Biography of Oral Bliss
The faint perfume
Of the sweetest peach
The slim slick tube
Encasing the silky smooth gel
Tasting and tingling
Healing, soothing, shining
My dry lips

After a slight squeeze
I rub my lips together
Creating a halo around my mouth
Glistening and shining
My senses are opened
To that divine pleasure
Of my favorite lip-gloss.

“Oral Bliss” started in 2005 as an assignment for my Techniques of Poetry class.  I was never much of a creative writer, so I learned a lot of techniques in this class, as well as a lot about myself.  We were allowed to skip two assignments, but, being somewhat obsessive, the assignment I missed (using rhyme and alliteration) became incorporated into the next assignment (praising something not normally praised).  I had a reputation among my friends of having a rather large lip-gloss collection, so one of them suggested I write a poem about lip-gloss for the class (she was taking the class as well).  I took the idea and I ran with it.  I shared almost every assignment with the class, and “Oral Bliss” was my pride and joy.  However, I was young and naïve, so I did not see the subtext until a few minutes before class when I read it to my boyfriend (we were high school sweethearts) and he told me how sexual it sounded.  The feedback from my classmates was the same as my boyfriend’s—my innocent poem did not sound as I intended.  The same friend who urged me to write the poem in the first place suggested I leave out the line about lip-gloss, so I changed the poem a bit and turned it in for our round-table workshop.  Our class was relatively small, about 10 students, and there were only a few males.  Given that my classmates had already heard the poem before the workshop, they knew what it was really about, but the analysis relied mostly on the sexual interpretation.  “Oral Bliss” remains a favorite of my own work, and my mother even shares it with almost everyone she encounters (I am her golden child, after all).  However, the real story of the poem is not just of my intentions; it is the poem’s story—from innocent love to sexual satisfaction, or perhaps from pre-pubescence to adulthood.  The lifespan of “Oral Bliss” is relatively short, only a few months, but what it accomplished in that short amount of time is relatively significant.  By taking on a life of its own, it has grown from something naïve and unknowing to what it is saying to something extremely aware and proud.
         
I did not go to a traditional university—there were students who were parents to infants, there were the traditional students, and there were students whose parents were also attending to obtain their undergraduate degrees.  My Techniques of Poetry classmates ranged from 18-years-old to 50-years-old, and I mean that quite literally.  The responses to my beloved poem in the workshop were not as varied as one might think—every one of them saw the sexual innuendo in my poem, even though, at first, I did not.  It seems as though they all took a more Freudian approach in their analyses, even though they did not explicitly state it.  Based on their responses, I almost felt as though I had some unresolved mental sexual issues that were making themselves known through my writing.  However, despite Freud’s theory of fetishism, which focuses only on why males have fetishes, Simone de Beauvoir’s view of women must be taken into consideration to fully understand how the intended subject is a fetish, based on the explanation presented by Freud and by the interpretations of both the author and the audience.

Oral Bliss—revision 1
The faint perfume
Of the sweetest peach
The slim slick tube
Encasing the silky smooth gel
Tasting, tingling
Healing, soothing, shining

After a slight squeeze
There’s a halo around my mouth
Glistening and shining
My senses are opened
To that divine pleasure

         This poem requires different types of interpretation—explication, critique, and appreciation, and the difference between authorial intentionality and reader interpretation are quite obvious.  The explication is required for understanding of the symbolism of the poem as “Oral Bliss” is short enough in length to warrant a line-by-line analysis, whereas the appreciation is quite the opposite, a formal interpretation for mere entertainment, and the critique’s place is to determine the reason for the subject matter, combining the “labor of deciphering a text in a methodical way…emphasiz[ing] the intimate, casual, and subjective aspects of reading….[and] accentuat[ing] the distances in values and time between the interpreter and the work” (Norton, 2).  “The scent of a fruit contained in liquid form creating a sensation on the speaker’s mouth with physical evidence and an enlightening experience” would be the text of the poem, but the subtext, the actual meaning, is where the explication of symbolism is needed in order to create full understanding.  Why is the peach so important?  Why does this gel affect the speaker in such a way?  What does the alliteration signify?  Even though each audience member is an individual, the subtext revealed to most of the audience was the same—rather than being an inanimate object, the “tube” is actually a penis, according to the audience.  But why would the author choose to write about something rather taboo, even if in a subversive way?  The critiques provided by the audience members, or, in this particular case, workshop members, provided valuable information as to the subtext.  What the speaker intended to communicate was, indeed, transmitted effectively, but why was it effective and how could it be even more subversive?  By understanding the questionable premises, the poem can be made more “dangerous” by going even further away from them.  The appreciation of the poem, however, is required because it is intended, by the author, to be enjoyable in a formalist way.  “Oral Bliss” is not didactic in any way—there is no lesson to learn, and is merely a source of entertainment, or, depending on the audience’s frame of mind, a form of pleasure.

Explication begins with exploring all aspects of the poem, and because the speaker seems to have an oral fixation, the best place to start is with none other than psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.  According to Freud, the origin of the fetish lies within the son’s discovery that his mother does not have a penis.  However, the author of “Oral Bliss” is a female, with the intention that the speaker is also a female, making the fetishistic approach only halfway correct, being as females cannot be sons, unless they are only female by result of a sex-change operation.  Freud states that “the fetish is a substitute for the penis” (Freud 953), and the tube of lip-gloss can be seen as a penis, given the correct lens.  “The slim slick tube” can be a metaphor the penis, with “the silky smooth gel” being the ejaculate that creates the halo around the speaker’s mouth.  The speaker, however, is intended to be a female, a daughter rather than a son, so the disappearance of the mother’s penis does not fit into this scenario.  Rather, it may be a substitution for a vagina—the father’s vagina, to be exact, but Freud makes no mention of women being capable of having fetishes, and therefore no explanation of what a woman’s fetish would substitute.  However, by reversing the roles and genitalia, the metaphor of the lip-gloss as the penis starts to break down, by Freudian standards, unless the daughter is looking for that first penis—the first penis being the one that replaced her father’s (or father figure’s) vagina.  This confusion very much harkens to Simone de Beauvoir’s comment that a woman “feels herself a stranger” (1410) within her own body.  Much like the son loses the mother’s penis, the daughter loses the father’s vagina, but her loss is not just a loss—it is a replacement.  By not understanding the origin of the fetish, the clear explanation presented by Freud becomes muddled when Beauvoir’s view of the woman comes into play.  The understanding of how a woman is a stranger in her own body reveals more information as to the formation of a fetish in a female, given the restrictions set forth by Freud.

         The critique of every audience member is important to the life of this poem.  By exploring what makes it sensual and what makes it sexual, the audience’s feedback enhances those qualities to make it even more so.  Rather than shy away from what is dangerous or questionable, the goal for “Oral Bliss” is to become subversive enough that a critique is absolutely necessary from all audience members, not just those in the workshop, to fully appreciate the work itself.  Beauvoir’s view of the mysterious woman relies heavily on the interpretation of the male audience members of this poem.  Heterosexual men can be assumed to not understand the relationship between a woman and her lip-gloss, and rather than “admitting his ignorance, he perceives the presence of a ‘mystery’” (1409) of the woman.  The male audience members, whether or not they had been aware of the previous draft, would have been more than happy to believe that the image of a perfect peach could be a substitute for “vagina” (which is not a new concept, Diane Ackerman and T.S. Eliot are among a group of poets who have used it).  This mystery of whether or not this peach is just the flavor of the lip-gloss or a vagina—the fantasy of a woman performing oral sex, whether on another female or on a male, “is for many a more attractive experience than an authentic relation with a human being” (1409).  He would rather be “alone with his dreams, his hopes, his fears, his love, his vanity” (1409).  The male audience members would prefer the mystery about the poem’s meaning rather than know that “Oral Bliss” is about lip-gloss and not oral sex.  Rather than discussing with the author the sexual subtext and what he desires from the poem, the male classmates gave less useful feedback for fear of embarrassment, and perhaps rejection. 

The appreciation interpretation relies mainly on the males in the audience because they “employ a particular set of interpretive strategies” (Norton, 19) for analyzing the poem.  They enjoy the wording because it reminds them of an oral pleasure, one that is not the author reading her own work the way it is meant to be read.  They have leeched on to the speaker’s obsession with lip-gloss, turning it into their own fetish, viewing it as the Freudian penis to recreate the feminine penis of their mothers.  Given the sexuality of the poem, the male audience members may also be envisioning themselves as the speaker and the lip-gloss as the maternal breasts—after all, suckling another man’s genitalia may be quite discomforting to some men, so they must make alterations to their fantasies to seem more masculine.  These maternal breasts are the “voluptuous qualities of feminine flesh” (1408), but they are meant for work, not just pleasure.  They are to feed babies, as women are meant to “work like a beast of burden” and are not granted “any right to sexual pleasure” (1409).  These masculine assumptions of women create a great confusion within this poem.  Why would the speaker be allowed such pleasure, especially sexual pleasure?  Is it because the pleasure stems from the woman’s work to please the man?  Depending on the man, or perhaps the efficiency of the woman, the work required may not be much. 

Beauvoir states that the myth “is revealed to the mind through a living experience; whereas the myth is a transcendent Idea that escapes the mental grasp entirely” (1408).  The myth revealed through the audience’s experience is that of oral sex—men claim to crave it, but finding a woman willing to give it is the myth.  By finding a woman’s whose oral fixation would satisfy him, the myth has become truth, but because the speaker in the poem may not necessarily be the author, the one presenting the poem, the one reading the poem to the audience, becomes a physical representation of the myth, if only because the words flow from her mouth to their ears and minds, much like the pleasure of oral sex flows from a woman’s mouth for the man’s pleasure.  However, these unholy pleasures (as such are not appropriate for the good Christians, or at least not discussed with those that are not in the party) could be said to be unnatural, going against the “pains and burdens that physiologically are women’s lot” (Beauvoir 1409).  If such an act is unnatural, why should the woman be expected or even required to perform such a duty?  Perhaps it is to make “her work like a beast of burden” (1409) because she is not allotted such carnal pleasures.

For such a little piece of work to require so much attention for full understanding is not odd in the world of art, especially when considering reader-response theories and authorial intentionality.  The best impact is made when one takes his (or her) time enjoying the poem, analyzing every part of it, knowing it inside and out, front to back.  It is a sensual poem that requires one’s full attention, and the understanding of the idea and background of “fetish” as well as understanding the feminist view makes the affair even better.  However, despite the rewrites, could “Oral Bliss” take the theories and criticisms to become even more of an adulterous being?  Is it possible to be even more subversive, or, perhaps, to make the speaker and the subject even more ambiguous, or would going to the extreme negate all the poem has strived to become?

Oral Bliss—final version (as of December 2005)
The faint perfume of the sweetest peach
The slim slick tube
Encasing the silky gel
Tasting and tingling
Healing, soothing, shining

After a slight squeeze
My mouth is a halo
That glistens
Opening my senses
To that divine pleasure